Forever is composed of Nows - Part 2
by SiSuHu
Summary: [Destiel] This is the second Part of my story "Forever is composed of Nows", it's not a spinoff, but an actual sequel
1. Chapter 1: The Glow

**Chapter 1: The Glow**

I remember. We were sitting at one of the dark wooden tables, with the little lamps on them. However I wasn't sitting several chairs away anymore, like usually, at another table. No, I was sitting at your table. Opposite to you. And perhaps it was only a little thing, but for me it was everything. During the past couple of days I had learnt, how much I needed your closeness. I proverbially needed it to survive, and sometimes also almost literally. I was leaned back in my chair and I didn't know, when I had last been so relaxed and calm. My eyes were resting on you. Yours were resting on another book. "Fangs and their Nature" - by a person called George McHarwelson. I don't know what it is, but something about vampires always seemed to have fascinated you. You were downright obsessed with them and with hunting them. Something in your eyes always starts glowing, even alone when you hear that word. And something in them always seems satisfied, whenever you can chop one of their heads off.

" _As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."_

 _(John Green, "The Fault in Our Stars")_

Your eyes slid over the pages and every now and then, when I was lucky, they briefly swept to me, accompanied by a little smile. I didn't know, what we were or where we were going, but I knew, what we had. It's not that I can put it in words, because in the end one barely ever can, but I could feel it. In the air we were breathing, in the wood of the tables we were sitting at, in the Scotch we were drinking together, every night from here and now, and not least in all the eye contacts we were sharing. And in your eyes, and maybe you could see it in mine, too. It was within our grasp and still not graspable. As if it existed without ever being caught. A Something one cannot comprehend, not understand and also not really see. But then I could still see it, every now and then, in your face, in mine, and in us. In everything we did and everything we shared. A Something that could exist without any evidence for its actualness. And it was as if I had finally understood, what love really meant, and did I really, I would say it is you.

Your phone rang and our peaceful silence was disturbed. Your attention wasn't directed at half the book and half me any longer, but only at that thing and its call. For a moment you eyeballed the glowing display, until you seemed to have decided to answer the call. I found the for me senseless noise of the phone-distorted voice of a caller and I almost tried to hear with my eyes. After far too many minutes your look finally met me again and a smile spread in your face. But it wasn't directed at me and mine, but that, which the caller seemed to tell you. And I smiled back, because even when I didn't like to be in the unknown, I knew you would explain it to me. You hung up and there it was. The glow in your eyes and the anticipation inside you. Your small smile became a wide smirk and infected me like fire.

"What is it?" I asked, even though I actually rather wanted to know, who had dared to disturb our silence.

"We have a job," you announced with so much cheerfulness in your voice, one could have almost believed you meant something nice. Then again, I could see the glow and knew it probably was nice for you.

"That was Rick," you said, as if I was supposed to know, who that was, when really, I had no idea, "he told me about a vampire nest outside Wisconsin a couple of days ago already. We're in"

And didn't I know you like nobody knew you, I would have just now understood. Your vampire madness had method. After all. You closed the book and almost ran away, not away from me, only towards your brother. You had to announce it, the merry message. And wasn't I so busy having a bad feeling about it, I would have been happy for you. For your glow and your joy and your future satisfaction by vampire the word, vampire the hunt and vampire the head chopping.

Rick. Who is Rick? I searched my head for any memories of that name, but found none. And something about that bothered me. I wanted to stay here, not alone, but with you. Here in our air, at our wood, in our room, where I watched you read and where the peaceful silence hovered above us like a protective glass cover. And I didn't want to have to share you, not even a bit. It was already hard to share you with a book, but people are worse. People talk and do things and say things that distract you, from me and from what we indeed didn't know, but feel. People put lies in your head and fables and lead you onto ways you shouldn't walk on, and ways, where I didn't exist on. At least not this version of me. And even when I also lied to you every now and then, not gladly, but necessarily, it wasn't the same thing. Because I lied to you to protect you and to hide all I did to protect you. People lied to you to get something from you, or to get you somewhere. And everything inside me hoped that wouldn't happen, and everything inside me knew I would prevent it.

" _True love will triumph in the end - which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have."_

 _(John Green)_


	2. Chapter 2: The Thoughts

**Chapter 2: The Thoughts**

It was the day after, when I found you packing in your room again. Unnoticed I stood in the doorway and watched you cramming stuff and things in your bag. Almost hurried, almost too fast to be true. Again I was scared. Again I didn't want you to go. But it was a completely different, fully new kind of fear. I didn't fear for your safety, I feared for the safety of our thing. I feared movement could change something. Like the fly on the surface of the water and a mild breeze that gets the water into motion just a little bit and threatens the tension and forces the fly to flee, so it wouldn't drown. So fragile were we, so new and threatened. The breeze was here and I was so scared of the movement, I really was.

I knocked on the doorframe and entered. Your gaze went up and you smiled. You held tight to the red-brown plaid shirt you had just rolled and twisted it around with both your hands, as if your fingers needed occupation. With a strange face you looked at me and seemed to wait for me to say something. But I didn't even actually know what I wanted here. I had lost the words I had just concocted, as if they had fallen from the tip of my tongue and disappeared from my head. Somewhat awkward maybe I was standing there now and was lost. Minutes, they almost felt like hours and days, we looked into each other's eyes silently and it was almost amusing.

"Hello," I interrupted the silence raspy and weird.

"Hey," you gave back and it was as if your head was just as empty as mine.

"Uhm…," I began after further minutes, "… you're packing?"

"Yup"

"When do you leave?" I asked, hoping your answer would be further in the future than feared.

"Tomorrow"

It hit me like the proverbial beat on the head. Tomorrow already. I couldn't help myself, I was so obvious. So readable and palpable, so bad at subtle. My expression seemed to show how utterly unpleased I was to hear that, of course they did, because suddenly you made a step towards me, determined and still unsure.

"You okay?" you asked unobviously and so simple that it somehow failed the complex situation. I found soft worry in your eyes. Soft and easy, definite, much easier and more definite than the storm and wind inside my head.

"Yes, I…," I stammered, but didn't finish my sentence. I wanted to say that I don't want you to leave, but something kept me from it. I didn't know what I want, not really. I only knew that I didn't want this. That you would go somewhere, to someone, and do something. I was aware that you needed a win, because after all you always need that. As if our thing wasn't enough of a win. But that's not what it was about. It wasn't even about the hunting itself, about the vampires or your madness around them. It wasn't about seeing your glow and your satisfaction, and god, god knows how much I love that glow. I didn't want you to go and leave me here, alone with myself, in this big bunker, our home. And even when I could come with you, I still didn't want it. I didn't know this Rick and I didn't know the situations we could get ourselves into. It was like chaos and disaster and a bad feeling in my stomach and in my heart and it stung and almost even hurt and I felt like I would do something for the first time and yet already know that I didn't like it, and my surroundings would spin around me like earth around sun and the moon around earth, and yet it would nevertheless be too much movement inside our silence, and everything seemed to waver around me and I didn't want anything more than to hold it tightly and protect it, because so fragile and breakable were we and so much fear had I for us.

" _My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations."_

 _(John Green, "The Fault in Our Stars")_

"Just come with us," you suggested, as if you had read my mind and as if it was the solution for all my problems. When really, it only solved a single one of them.

"Uhm… yes. Okay." I gave with a surprised face and wasn't sure, if I was happy about it. You looked at me like you tried to find out, what was going on in my head, but even when you would have asked me, I couldn't have told you. It was as if I knew it all and at the same time nothing at all. Like complete emptiness and bone-crushing overfill. And I almost wondered if it, this here, was jealousy. Not that I knew how that feels.

The brain-clouding, all-possessing jealousy, of which I had heard so much already, but had never understood it. Because some things can only be comprehended, when one feels them, when one has them inside and has seen every of its facets. And I didn't even try to fight it, because as illogical and complicated it was, it yet had one truth always in it: it appears, when something is important. And we were. Important. And I still didn't fight it, when I asked myself, what kept me from just locking you up, maybe tied to a chair, so I would be the only one to set eyes on you and the only one you set eyes on. Half unconscious, half determined, I suppressed my tumultuous pictures of thoughts about driving cars, which would get us somewhere, where only we exist, and about signs, which I would have to see, if we and our We were in danger.

And I didn't care how long it would take, until we would get closer again, until we would finally be close to each other, in whatever kind of way, because I would give all the time in the world to you and wait for the day to come. And I also didn't care how far I would have to go to sustain our thing. I would do it for you. I thought, the only thing I understood and knew better than you were the things that had to be done to keep you on the right way. And would there be a barrier in the way, I would get rid of it. I was unaware and even unsure what was there and would come, but yet as determined as never.

" _Once you think a thought, it is extremely difficult to unthink it."_

 _(John Green, "The Fault in Our Stars")_


	3. Chapter 3: The Imagination

**Chapter 3: The Imagination**

I remember, how it was. How we have been and how we were and how we are. We are like a puzzle that gets put together anew over and over again. Like a strange structure, which never actually belonged together, but was against all nature holding together. Our thing hasn't always been there, like it is for some, I can't even say that it has even always been in me. But there's something about you that just doesn't stop changing me. And don't get me wrong, that's not something bad, it's just that I don't understand it. And yet, our thing grew more and more and the more I've changed, the more you've changed and the more we've become us. It's as if this We was an inexorable force, un-brake-ably proceeding and rapid. So rapidly we had something. Grown by its tasks and changed by our dynamic.

Dynamic. First you've been scared of me. And I wanted it like that. I wanted respect and obedience. I've been a dangerous creature in your eyes, one you haven't known. Someone you've known absolutely nothing about, about whom you haven't known what he plans and what he wants and what he does in your life, and not even how you can kill him. This for you almighty being that has entered your life. The most scared you've probably been of not knowing, whether I would attack you or help you. And in the end, uncertainty is what probably scares us the most.

I have been powerful, and much more knowing than you, an entity of heaven, supernatural, super powerful, super ambitious. Forwarded by god to complete a task. Powerful enough to pull you out of hell, back to earth, back into your life. So powerful that my true form burns out people's eyes and my true voice makes your ears bleed and every glass shatter. And then. Then you have appeared and twisted and changed it all. A little human, who has planted something in my head that I haven't known until then: doubt. About the big godly plan, about the order of heaven and earth, and hell even, about my brothers and sisters, about god himself. And not least about myself. Like with a simple click of your fingers you've vitiated everything I have ever believed in, everything I have ever been. And yet, it wasn't horrible and demolishing it all, it was just scary and new.

And suddenly it hasn't been divine revelations, or orders of heaven, or the written word of god, that decides the future and would lead us all. It hasn't taken all these things anymore to make me move and make me do something. No. Suddenly for the decisions I have to make I've only needed one thing: Dean Winchester. My entire millennial old world has been turning around a single human all of a sudden. And everything I have needed to make a decision is the thought of you may think bad of me. Not more. Just that.

And there it was then, our dynamic. Your image of me has become so important to me that I've forgotten everything around me. Everything I have ever known, everything I have experienced, everything I have understood, and everything I have been. We've developed our own language, our own kind of way to treat each other. And I would word it nicer, but there is no nicer word for blackmail. Because that's what it was. Something we both often did to influence each other. Blackmail and threats. You only and alone had to say that you wouldn't talk to me anymore or wouldn't want to have anything to do with me anymore, and instantly I've made a complete turnaround and changed my mind. That easily. That pure.

And someday I've realized that it suddenly isn't about saving the world or the future of humanity anymore. Ultimately it has only and always been about you. It's like I've lost my destination. Exchanged for something more important. As if I had lost my head, by something as simple as the fear of losing you. My thinking mutilated beyond recognition and my task misjudged, because I have found something that is more important to me than obedience and power and respect. I have fallen for you. In every possible and imaginable kind of way.

And I've known from the beginning that this is not friendship. That I haven't given it all up to be your friend. That I haven't gone through all this only for that. It's something else. Because this is not how friends treat each other, this is not the nature of friends, neither the words we've said, nor the way we've said them. Friends discuss, friends find a common denominator, friends agree to disagree. And friends accept that. But we don't. We intervene in our businesses, we intervene everywhere. We don't act after belief and after sense and reason. Here between us there's no space for reason. We are overwhelmed and driven by feelings. Emotions have taken over, and that's not something friends do.

All I've wanted then, only and alone, is to understand you. Who you are, who you want to be, what makes you you and what pushes you. I've never been interested in understanding humanity, or the world itself perhaps. Only you, you I want to understand. I have studied you and observed, intensely thought about you and about what you've said and done. But then again, no matter how hard one tries, one never really manages to, right?

" _Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else… But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in."_

 _(John Green, "Paper Towns")_

I remember. After a several hours drive on the backseat of your Impala, I was so happy to finally arrive. Pent-up behind you and your brother, while I only really heard half of your conversations. The music from the old radio whirred in my ears and the sun glared at me through the stained window. The only ray of hope were your brief looks through the rearview mirror. I couldn't see your face, only the small section the mirror allowed, like a distorted idea of your eyes that failed them completely.

Fox Lake, Wisconsin. We parked on the parking lot in front of a shabby motel, a little outside Fox Lake, in Waupun, with the creative name Inn Town Motel, which was as pale and stale as the motel itself. The beige paneled outside walls almost seemed friendly compared to the roofs, which were as grey as the sky above them. The parking lot was wet and by its scruffy unevenness laced with puddles that held the rain water of the passed shower. We went through a small white glass door next to a soft drink machine into the ugly main building, which overshadowed the whole site like a threateningly steep mountain, to the reception to check in. The friendly young woman at the counter seemed partly happy, but unbelievably out of place.

The room, which, like every other, contained two beds, a sporadic kitchen, an ugly but serviceable bathroom, and a round table with two chairs, was admittedly not as horrible as the outside view would have suggested. The creme-colored walls were a sharp contrast to the dark carpet, but the friendly beds with their dark wooden, high rising head pieces seemed comfortable and inviting. But I wasn't here to judge the interior design of some motel. And not even a 4-stars-hotel would have made this better for me. The bad feeling in my human stomach grew more and more and every single cell of my being wanted to run away and take you with me away from here.

"Cas? You okay?" you asked, when I let myself down on one of the chairs and probably looked like the proverbial kicked dog. I looked up at you and it was as if I just now remembered again, how good you are for me. Your sheer presence seemed to make me forget about all my doubts and all my jealousy. Which is paradox and ironic, when you consider that you were their cause. The cause and the solution for all my problems.

"Yes, I…," I stammered still brain-clouded, as if I was high, high from all the thoughts and feelings that made clear thinking impossible for me, "… just feel a little sick from the long drive"

You did a step towards me and you looked worried. I almost felt bad about lying to you, but then again it wasn't really a lie, because I actually felt sick. And I imagined you coming to me and putting your hand on my face and you finger moving over my rough skin, you looking into my eyes and feeling what I feel, and knowing what I know. That we belong together and need to protect our thing and that there's nothing that could change anything about that. That we've gone this entire painful, disastrous way together and are now here, where we were, and it needs no threat, no blackmail and no decisions anymore to share the same world through the same eyes. And then instead, back in reality, you put your hand on not-my-face-my-shoulder and looked into my eyes, without seeing and feeling what I saw and felt, with a smile that couldn't have been any more friendship-y. And again I lost my head.

" _If you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."_

 _(John Green, "Paper Towns")_


	4. Chapter 4: The Problem

**Chapter 4: The Problem**

Not even two hours later we reached Rick's house, in the middle of a forest, in the middle of nowhere. I got out of the car and felt the soft, wet forest ground underneath my steps. The air surrounding us was clear and wet. In front of us an old wooden house, little inviting, much hunter-like. I heard steps on the rotten wood of the narrow veranda and found a man standing there. He was well built, dark hair, a slight beard, plaid shirt under a sleeveless vest, ragged jeans and heavy boots. He looked like the stereotype all-states-inhabitant hunter in his natural habitat, and did he wear a serious expression at first, it became a mild smile, as he saw you. And I understood him.

You walked towards him and embraced him like an old friend, while Sam only shook his hand. And don't I understand your brother all of the time, in this moment I felt more bonded to him than ever. I on the contrary was just standing behind you a little away, somehow unpleasantly disturbed, somehow insecure, and observed your interaction with him. I don't know what I tried to see or not to see, but I know that I didn't like it. After the usual smalltalk, Rick's gaze suddenly and unhoped-for found me and I downright felt him examining me and was almost able to read his train of thoughts. He made a head motion in my direction, while he was looking into your eyes far too long, and I didn't like how you looked at me then. As if I was embarrassing you, or unpleasing, or too much me.

"That is Cas," you just said, as if I was only that, as if these three words were anywhere near able to hold all I was. I did an unmotivated gesture to greet him, but however didn't look into his eyes. There was something about them that I didn't like. Perhaps they were too dark, perhaps they made me feel like I was of lesser worth, perhaps I didn't want to see his cautious I-don't-know-you disrespect. Or perhaps they just weren't yours.

We all stepped into the house and Rick filled us in on the case. But I barely even listened, I was far too busy watching you two. How you were hanging on his lips, how you smiled, how you never disagreed with him and laughed at every of his jokes. It was ridiculous how much you seemed to worship this man. He was a simple guy, a hunter like any other, and yet, yet you admired him. I didn't know your story, or your shared past, I didn't even know how you two had met. But something told me that Rick was neither simple, nor like any other for you. And that's just why I wondered, why you had never told me about him.

There definitely seemed to be a connection between the two of you and it couldn't be of a family nature, because Sam seemed to be almost as much of a stranger to him as I was. Sam seemed to be interested in him only relating to business. And it made me boil inside, the realization that it wasn't the same with you. First I thought he was just another perverted, weird father figure for you, someone you were looking up to, someone, who still couldn't replace your father, no matter how hard you tried, and however kept trying. But Rick was hardly older than you and as much as you seemed to be loyal to him, you weren't looking up to him. You were on the same rank as him, on the same level.

You just liked him. He was your friend. And you looked so happy in his presence. I had rarely seen you so relaxed and loosened, so casual and free of tension. Carefree, easy-going, cheerful even. Peaceful. Not like usually, tense and in the constant preparedness for attack and defense, not in constant fear. Because that you are. And you're so used to being in danger and in pain and hurt and fear and disaster, that you don't even really register it anymore. Perhaps that's just what makes you seek for people you neither had to protect, nor save. With whom you can be truly carefree and full of peace. And that's exactly what Rick is. Someone, who was capable of protecting himself, someone, who didn't need you. Not someone like me. Because didn't I need your protection any more, it only and alone counted that I needed it in your opinion.

After I had excused myself, I went outside in the fresh air of dawn and for a moment I was standing there in front of the hut, just and singly. Lost and rooted to the ground. I looked to the redly glowing sky, cut in pieces by several branches of the needle trees surrounding me and beautiful. I needed air. Distance. Release from the present. In a haze of surprise and desperation I asked myself what I was even doing here. Here in your life, here near you. Was I nothing more than another burden for you? No one you could be easygoing with? I wish I could have scratched out my eyes, just to not having to see how much I wasn't him. And perhaps I was exaggerating, perhaps this was overreacting. But all I see somehow comes back to you. And all I feel comes from you.

And perhaps I was just that in your eyes. The burden. Another person in your life you had to protect and save. But I wouldn't stop being in danger, that's engraved in my story and my being like the word in stone. And every time I would get hurt would just be another time you would feel like failing me, like disappointing me. But the thing is; you can't save everyone. Especially when someone doesn't want to be saved. And I am this someone. I don't want you to protect me, I don't want you to think I was your responsibility. I want to be someone, who backs you up and doesn't back off, and who helps you to live your life into every detail of its horribleness, and even more, to love it.

I took a deep breath and wandered back to the hut with slow steps. Briefly pausing in the doorway, I heard Rick murmuring something with his deep voice, which sounded like a joke. A joke about me. Because evidently I wasn't more than that to him. And would he know of all my supernaturalness and all the power I'd used to have, he would give me the respect I deserved.

"Because he is a weird guy, okay?" I heard you answer, as my bowel cramped by the joking tone in your voice, when you put me over the edge, "He's a weird, dorky, little guy."

It didn't even hurt me to hear you talk about me like that, because I knew you had already said that about me once. Actually it even made me smile a little bit. After all, you were right. I am weird. And I am dorky. And I fell for you, which, after all, was the reason for my weird dorkyness. I fell for you like the air for wind, like the mountains for the rain, and like humanity for a god. The one comes with the other.

I entered the room and all three of you were looking at me, as if I was interrupting, or as if you were embarrassed. You, at least, seemed to fear that I could have heard you. I put on my best pretend smile and it seemed to work. It should, after all I had learned it from you. In the inside however, I was ashamed of myself. I thought, I should stand up for me, or at least try to have any stand at all. But again I was just the silent observer of the things you did. With a mask in my face, the mask of a loser, the mask that was supposed to disguise my inner unsteadiness. Who I was in this very moment was worse than ever. I was like an incarnate lie on two legs. All I wanted was to be close to you, to be the important person in your life, who you're not embarrassed of, who's not interrupting. Not the idiot, who followed every of your steps, hoping he could conserve the We, failing completely, or at least being horribly in vain at finally doing a step forwards.

The lie in person, about which you neither knew what it was really thinking, nor what it did and accomplished for you day in day out, only to make you be okay. And when you were okay, I had to make you happy, and when you were happy, I had to make you even happier, and when you were even happier, I had to make you carefree, and when that, I had to take all the worry off you, so you, to all that, were also in peace. It was an impossible thing to do and I almost despaired of not knowing what I needed to do to manage all that. It was as if I was wanted and on the run, by you and from you. And every moment I had with you only created a new one, which was still in the future, and in the stars if it would be another day that is okay. Because okay is all I get.

You see? You don't know my mind the way you know my name. You don't know my heart the way you know my face. You only and alone know what I show you, what I tell you. A never ending mission, constantly holding me in the present and at the same time in the future, as if I was stuck in between two worlds that desperately tried to become one. I didn't want to despair, I only finally wanted to be there. It was as if I was forever on my way somewhere and I just wanted to arrive. I wanted a happy ending.

" _The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")_


	5. Chapter 5: The Distraction

**Chapter 5: The Distraction**

I remember. We were sitting in one of those bars at one of those nights, where the hunt had been so easily done, so fast and successfully ended, that it wasn't even worth telling about. Sam was playing with the bottle in his hand and listened to you and Rick reminiscing the story we had all lived. And me, I could only observe. You laughed and joked and looked at each other again and again, whenever you couldn't decide who talks first. Your eyes met so often, I didn't even feel like being actually here anymore. The glow in your eyes wasn't meant for me anymore, not even for the vampires you had just defeated, only for him.

I tried to count how often you two were touching each other, because, whatever, I convulsively tried not to jump at his throat. Over and over again your hand touched his shoulder, settled there, until you slit it off him softly. And I was boiling, I was boiling so much, I couldn't even admit it to myself. Because it was so irrational and illogical and I didn't want to be that way. I knew who I was and what I meant to you. But the sheer presence of this person made me forget about it all and I was scared that it wasn't important anymore that I was here in your life, forever and for such a long time already, and he only now and in this moment.

We had left a mark, we had. Our kiss, as long ago it felt, left a mark of us belonging together, of us being one. And above all, of you also knowing that, not only me. And no matter how much we had been through, no matter how much we were and did for each other, no matter what we shared, this simple short moment of your distraction seemed to, at least inside my head, undo it all. I couldn't hold you, if you didn't do anything for it, and if that Rick did everything for our bond to threaten to break.

And I really wondered, what was the matter with you? I was holding you, protecting you, did everything for you. I was here to save you, from all the fear and panic, from the disaster of your life, from your nightmares and not least from yourself. From you, your life, and from all of it. While you, inevitably and evidently, thought that you were not worth saving. Instead you seemed to have decided that it was easier to abandon yourself to someone, who couldn't save you. Because much more important was that you didn't have to save him as well. And it destroyed me that I was here to watch over you and you didn't let me.

" _The marks humans leave are too often scars."_

 _(John Green, "The Fault in Our Stars")_

Far too many hours later we finally said goodbye to Rick and drove to our motel. Tomorrow we would go back home and all this would hopefully be forgotten. You and Sam, you were done with Rick, at least you were done with working with him. Me on the other hand, I wasn't. I couldn't let him get in our way again somewhere in the future. I couldn't let you jump into something so frivolously and blindly once more, which might be easy for you and made many things easier, but could never be as good and important as the thing we had. It wasn't healthy for you to let yourself get distracted by something that didn't help you, but only put it all in a grey disguise in a misleading kind of way, like an illusion of comfort, from which you just had to break out again sooner or later. Because that's how illusions are, they give you a good feeling for as long as it takes you to realize that they're not real. And then, inevitably and evidently, you come back into reality and get the false realization that it is all much worse than it actually is. I had to prevent that. I did it for you. I did it because of you.

So when I was sitting in your room and you were sound asleep, you and Sam, I took the chance and quietly sneaked outside. I knew where to find Rick, and the alcohol in his blood would make it all even easier for me. Everything went as planned, and really, that plan was the only thing that had kept me from interrupting and fake shorten the night at the bar together with him, as much as it had disputed me. I wanted you to have that moment, give you the happy memory of Rick you could keep forever. I owed you that much.

I was standing in the middle of his hut in a room that was supposed to be his living room, and stared at him. Clouded and tiredly he was sitting on the couch and looked into the TV. When he eventually noticed me, I had already thought of every of his possible motions and was perfectly prepared. Really, he didn't have the slightest chance. Confused and visibly irritated he stood in front of me, when I put my hand on his cheek. He fell to his knees, in his eyes naked horror and panic and pain. And it wasn't fun for me, not even a little bit.

"I'm sorry," I said. It's almost absurd, the fact that only, when we know that someone is about to die, find the true greatness and courage to say all we think. And I could do that, I could tell him everything, because he wouldn't be able anymore to tell anyone about it. I told him that it wasn't about him, but that he still was a problem for me and you. I told him that I had to sacrifice him, so you and me would be able to grow. And I told him that there was nothing he could have done to change anything about that fact. Shortly after that his eyes closed. Dead. As painless as I was able to. The jealousy inside me said let him suffer, the heart, though, said let him go. I knew his soul would rest in peace in heaven and that he, someday, would probably understand that his death wasn't the worst part of his life.

A part of me knew that it wasn't right to kill. But I couldn't help myself. Like they, so many of my brothers and sisters, had said, I have this one weakness. I like you. I did from the start. It was always only about saving that one special human. You. I wanted to save you, and I would do anything for that. No matter how crazy and chaotic and confusingly screwed up it would get, I would never back down and never back off. And I had always known that it was a weakness, that I lost power and respect and so much more than that, that I lost my entire world around me and was falling and falling and couldn't go back and had burdened myself with so much pain and weight, and all of that only to be with you. And yet, the true nature of that weakness revealed itself only now. I was in love. So incredibly and utterly in love, that I never wanted to feel anything else.

I knew sooner or later you would find out that Rick is dead. And you would look into it, you would try to find all the answers waiting for you out there. And it would hurt to know he's dead, to know that you've lost him. And then I would be here again, like always, here for you and would catch you and comfort you and listen to you not being able to stop getting worked up about it and yelling and being angry and realizing your own mortality. And it would get horrible and difficult, but I would be there. Because good things do happen, Dean. They do. And you would say words and be scared and fear, for everything and everyone, and for you and for me, and for the world itself. But it would die away. Because you still had me. Without any distraction and without easy illusions you could turn to. Because in the end I am the only thing you really need.

" _Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters."_

 _(John Green/David Levithan, "Will Grayson, Will Grayson")_


	6. Chapter 6: The Sadness

**Chapter 6: The Sadness**

I remember. It was a couple of days later, perhaps a week. Everything was back to normality, even when not all was as I wanted it to be. We spent our days inside the bunker, sometimes one went to get us a meal from outside, mostly Sam, sometimes also one of us. You were reading books upon books and somewhen I had decided to do so as well. Sometimes we were sitting next to each other for hours, without a single word, and reading stories of people from past times, rituals and facts and things we someday could even perhaps be using. It had become quiet around us. But I was patient, I really was. We were like two lines, not parallel to each other, sooner or later our ways would cross again, not literally, locationally, but figuratively. Because as it's said in the Corinthians, love is patient.

Every now and then you would look at me, and even when there didn't seem to be much declaration in these gazes, they showed one thing for sure: affection. An implied smile, or the slight deepening of the wrinkles around your eyes, the hold of my attention, until eventually it would be interrupted, but not abruptly and bullheadedly, only soft and lovingly. I could see a lot of life in you, I could see how much you shared it with me. Because love is kind and does not envy. It was no sprint, it was a marathon, and we would both win it.

Yet, I was waiting for the day to come, when all your calmness and kindness would suddenly disappear, with the annihilating knowledge of the death of a friend. And even when I was to blame for, or at least the cause of, this coming annihilation, I was armed for it. It wouldn't be nice, it would be ugly and sad and hard. But I would be here. And even when love does not boast, is not proud, does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs; no matter how many bad things I had done, I knew it was okay to do something stupid, if I do it for the right reasons. And it was paradox and strange that just that love, how it is described, but seemed to be so different to the kind of way I was feeling it, was the reason and trigger for my wrong actions.

And even when it does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth, it still always protects. It always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. And here was I and hoped for all of it, hoped the truth would never be unearthed, and if it would, that we would get through it, that you would understand my point and would persevere me the way I was. But then again, you had done that once already, even several times. I had failed you often, and I always managed to get back into your life and back into your heart. And sometimes I wondered, if not really you were the one, who had lost his head and had fallen for me. Over and over again.

Like it's said in the Corinthians: Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass way. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Your phone rang and I startled out of my train of thoughts back into here and now. You answered it and your expression changed from calm and relaxed, and perhaps even a bit tired, to confused, to shocked, to devastated, within a few seconds. I assumed annihilation and in the inside prepared for it, came around and to a decision. Until you looked at me, with the phone still at your ear. Your lids briefly implied a tired closing, as if they tried to make the said words easier, but weren't allowed to. As you ended the call with a rough sound, I found tears in your eyes, which disappeared again so fast that I could have never noticed them, if I wouldn't be staring at you without blinking. As if you had sucked them back into your skull with all your will power, something that seemed impossible to me, and yet I could witness it all the time.

" _You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile."_

 _(John Green, "The Fault in Our Stars")_

I discovered how fake your smile was. I discovered its sheer falsehood behind all this mask and wall, and looked deep into you and your eyes and discovered all the pain and loss in there. Minutes passed, where I was staring at you in expectation, and you again and again couldn't bear how much my gaze knew what you were feeling, and so you looked away, at your hands, at the coated wood of the table, at the ceiling, and everywhere else where I was not. It took a little, until I dared to speak.

"What's the matter?"

You looked at me again and your eyebrows made your facial expression to something suffering, as if you had finally decided to give up on the unsuccessful charade.

"It's Rick," you whispered and stared back at your hands, which were shaking and still holding the phone, "he's dead."

Luckily it had never been my nature to react to bad news with loud outrage and shock, because those were things my talent of acting wouldn't have been enough for. Instead I could react like I always did. With quiet dismay and silence. My hand settled on your shoulder, so close to your neck that one of my fingers touched it.

"What happened?" I asked, not unknowing what had actually happened, but not knowing which version was told in the community.

"Doctors say it was a heart attack," you said and barely noticeable shook your head, while I saw an idea developing in your head, "but that… that's not how we die, right? I mean hunters don't die of something like that, we die bloody and messy and… supernatural"

"Sometimes things are what they seem to be, Dean," I said calmly and found your upset look on me.

"Nothing's what it seems, Cas," you gave back and I felt anger rising inside you, "never!"

I lowered my head and it was hard not to take that anger personally. You weren't mad at me, you were mad at the situation. At the fact that you had lost someone once again, that life was unfair to you. At the world, at the injustice, at the universe perhaps even. Not at me.

"I'm sorry, Dean," I said therefore, meaning my actual action you didn't know about, but pretending to mean something else.

"What you're sorry for?"

"That was a well-worn phrase and…," I paused for a moment and then managed to look into your eyes, "… and I'm sorry your friend is dead."

You ran your hands over your face and with that motion also stripped my hand off your shoulder. You briefly covered your eyes, as if it helped with bearing your pain and the desperation, then you took a deep breath and seemed to pick up courage.

"I know it's a setback. A massive one even. And I'm not even close to being able to imagine how you feel right now, but…," I said, although I knew exactly how you felt, "… you will get through this."

"Yeah," you gave, but I heard a clear No, "you've said that so often, I lost count"

"Because it never ceases to be true, Dean"

For a moment you just looked at me and I found the anger disappearing and doubts coming up. And you said, "What if someday it ceases?"

I didn't know, if you meant It, the truth of what I had said, or It, that you would get through it, or perhaps even a fully other It. There were infinite possibilities inside your words, so that it seemed impossible for me to find words that could answer to them. So I put my hand on your cheek, my thumb slightly stroking the rough skin, and answered with my eyes. You would get over it. Because love is kind and above all but more healing than anything else in this world. And it was almost funny that something so sad would get you so much closer to me.


	7. Chapter 7: The Low

**Chapter 7: The Low**

I knew we had reached a new low, when I found you at night, sitting on the floor, leaned to one of the book cases. The bottle in your hand was almost finished and I found a broken glass not far from you, in a puddle of the same liquid. You looked at me, your gaze clouded, your eyes dreary. Not a single muscle seemed to move in your face, your body paralyzed by all the alcohol in your blood. I wanted to ask you what you're doing, but I already knew the answer. You were grieving. Your friend. The world around you that had shown you its nasty face once again. I reached out my hand to you to help you up, but in a flood of a sudden rising feeling you slapped it away. I nodded hardly noticeable, looked to the ground and left the room. I knew your look didn't follow me, instead you cursed yourself for being so foolish to scare off the only person, who offered you their help.

But I wasn't actually gone. A little later I came back with another bottle in my hand and with a cautious distance to you sat down next to you onto the cold, glossy wooden floor, which mirrored so much more than our mere presence. I put down the bottle between us and didn't say a word. It didn't seem you were up for talking. You didn't need a conversational partner, you needed someone, who just and simply was with you and who saw you and your feelings with you. You needed someone, who just suffered with you, so you wouldn't have to do it alone.

I'd rather have you cheerful and happy and in peace, I admit that, but even the raw, brutal reality of pain seemed to have a beauty to it that had always amazed me. I remembered what one of my brothers has once said to me. He's asked me if I know why angels are meant to stay away from the humans. He's said that it's not, because we are a danger to them. But because they are a danger to us. Back then I haven't fully understood what he's meant by that. By now I knew. Humans show us what it means to feel, what it really means to be human. Feelings, Emotions. Dangerous temptations.

Back then I was a soldier. A warrior of the Lord. A part of a big picture that stood above humanity and wasn't meant to have their own life. And then you came into my non-life and all of a sudden all that seemed so pointless to me. Humans, who love each other, are loyal, hate each other, shout at each other and hurt and even kill. Driven and dulled by sheer violence and longing and lust and heart. Without reason, you might say, but with more reason than every single angel I've ever known. And I saw it, the beauty in it and why one would want that.

I have changed. I'm not a soldier anymore and I don't belong to heaven anymore. I am a single, living, solitarily deciding individual with a free will, and no matter how often I've been told that I've become weak, that I've developed a weakness for humanity, yes, a weakness for you even, I am not. I'm not weak. I know that, because you told me so. They were right with how far I've fallen. No wings. No home. But I had you. And you had me. You'd rather have me, cursed or not. Your words.

And no matter how much of an angel I was, who was no angel, to my surprise there were still brothers and sisters, who wanted to follow me. Not in my footsteps, but at least my orders. They gave me their trust. But in the end it always had the same outcome. They realized that I didn't belong to them, not to heaven, not god, not to earth, or any greater good. They begged me not to lose myself over one man. They called you a filthy ape and said you were always talking me down and humiliating and mocking me. But you weren't and you didn't. You were family. And I had to choose. Them or you. And I chose you. Every time.

" _You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person and why."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All the Way Down")_

I looked at you and found the mere realization that once again you were hating your life. It was one of those moments, where you couldn't wrap your head around the facts of being alive, where nothing makes sense and everything seems simply and alone horrible. Where you regretted it all and wanted nothing anymore, but to blame yourself, because inside the little, confused, self-desperate mind of yours, which I had learned to love, it was the easiest thing you could still do. You didn't know who to hate for it, the world itself, which wasn't to blame for it, the universe, which seemed so far away, even when surrounding you, that it could hardly be a part of it, or god perhaps, about whom you knew that he simply didn't care. So you blamed the only one you didn't have to explain, why it's his fault: you.

I opened the full bottle and held it towards you with the bottom side. You understood and slightly hit it with your bottle. Here's to that we share our sorrow, that our hearts understand each other forever and that our eyes see the same awful world. You emptied the rest of the content with one sip and seemed pleased with the soft intoxication of the bitter alcohol. I did so as well, even when my bottle was still completely filled. But I'm still an angel, even when not one as originally planned by god, not even that amount of alcohol had a definite effect on me. Yet, I had to burp, after I had demolished the last sip, and perhaps wishful thinking was misleading me, but I thought to see the implication of a smile in your face. And suddenly I understood why the angels cursed and hunted us. They envied us. Because we had something they would never have.

And you would be okay. You would forget your grief and the anger on life and remember who you are. Dean Winchester. Always fighting and never lost. Strong and much stronger than everyone else. And with my help you would someday not think back and find it all unfair and pointless, but only that you once had a friend called Rick and now not anymore. He shall rest in peace.

" _You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened."_

 _(John Green, "An Abundance of Katherines")_


	8. Chapter 8: The Peanut Butter

**Chapter 8: The Peanut Butter**

There are different kinds of love and character traits to them, too. One. We can feel attracted to each other for bodily traits and just love to make each other orgasm and are lost in the sweaty tantalizing passionate temptation of the sensation itself, which is nice and just as addicting as love, even if it's not the thing itself.

Two. We can like each other into the depths of each other's nature, like every part and every flaw about one another, but don't ever touch or even have sexual intercourse, which is love as well, but only friendly love, not quite the thing itself.

Three. We can have our hearts being broken at the same places, feeling the same sad way about things and sharing our sadness, that's something like love, even if not the thing itself.

Four. And then we can love every aspect of one another, every good trait, every flaw, every look and every single freckle on each other's faces, be passionate about every shared moment together, even the most banal ones, be attracted to each other both sexually and emotionally, be a friend, a lover, a psychologist, a protector, a guardian and a viewer and observer of every single thing they do, just because all they do is so special and precious to you that you want nothing more than to keep them near you as close as you can and never let go. Your whole life becomes them and it's so worth losing your head over it. That's love, that's true unsuperficial, more than friendly, not just broken, devouring it all love, and that's exactly what I had with you.

" _You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")_

When I found you, in the middle of the night and in the middle of the kitchen, I wasn't sure, if you were better or worse. At least you weren't cowering in a corner on the floor with an originated by anger pool of alcohol and broken glass next to you, but with only the familiar bottle in your hand. You were sitting on the table, not at it, staring at your hands and seeming to find something in them that bothered you. It really was a strange view I was getting, but I guess in strange times such is within the scope of normality. I slowly entered the room and eventually sat down on the chair in front of you. You were enthroned above me like a lonely king in a kingdom of sadness, your body throwing a shadow upon me I probably deserved.

I stared up at you, right into your eyes, which still didn't seem to really notice me. I discovered more color in your face than the days before, so I concluded that you must have slept at least for a few hours. I almost ached to ask you how you are, but I knew better than that, you hated that question. I don't know if it's, because you didn't want to answer it, or because you couldn't. Or perhaps you just didn't feel like it was important.

So instead I asked: "Peanut butter?"

Finally you noticed my presence, seemed to wake from whatever trance you had been in and shook your had in denial. For a moment you regarded my face, as if to discover completely new things in it. Then your hold around the bottle tightened and you led it to your mouth. I, though, put my hand half on you half on the Whiskey and stopped you, with a brassbound look that tried to advise you against it.

"Peanut butter." I then ordered and you gave up. I rose, quickly and trained made you the sandwich you needed and handed it to you. You looked at me with a likewise gaze as when we had met for the very first time, as if I was entirely insane, entirely causelessly cruel to you, as if I wasn't doing you a favor. But actually, it was clearly you, who was insane. And cruel to yourself. It was as if you were separated from your heart. Even when you were standing in the light, you always felt only the darkness.

"You're such a pain in the ass," you said with a voice like gravel, but a tiny trace of a smile sneaked onto your lips. I knew it was an insult, but I as well knew that it was much more a compliment.

"I know," I answered, when our eyes met and all the magic in them seemed to recharge. It's weird, how we always manage to share something so nice in the darkest hours and the biggest disasters and worst situations. No matter how bad we were, we could still build each other up like no one else could. As if we were a code nobody was able to crack, but us, an indecipherable cipher. And in our infinite cryptology that nobody understood we worked, in the teeth of all resistances. We were just better together.

"I know you are doing bad," it suddenly burst out of me, after a long while, and you looked up from your sandwich, which you stuffed in like you hadn't eaten in days. Then again, you probably really hadn't.

"I'm fine," you said, as if it wasn't a lie.

"No." I decided, "You are not. It's fine to grieve, it's fine you're having difficulties to deal with it, but -"

"I am dealing with it," you cut me off and even when your voice sounded calm and steady, I could hear the anger inside it like the loud buzz of an illuminated advertising board at night. Don't speak, when you should actually be yelling.

"Yes." I gave back, "No. You are not dealing with it, you drown it in alcohol. That at most counts as numbing the pain, though doesn't heal your wounds and your anger and your grief, Dean."

I let my words sink in for a couple of moments and found it hard to bear your thoughtful, but visibly irritated staring. It was as if you tried to make me explode with your mere eyes, because I had dared to disagree. And I wondered, why you were still thinking about it, when you already knew damn well that I was right.

"I thought, perhaps it's time to start hunting again," I suggested and your eyebrows knitted in incomprehension.

"What for? To get myself some injuries? To see people die? Or rather to kill someone, because oh right, I'm meant for that?"

I glanced at you for a moment, as if you had just offended me, when really, you had only offended yourself, and then said, "You know, Rowina once said, nothing makes wounds heal better than opening new ones."

"Oh, now we're listening to something Rowina, that bitch, said?" you fired back, your voice finally shaking with aggression. Your feelings were being felt, even when the wrong ones, but at least any of them.

"Just because we can't stand her, doesn't mean her words can't hold wisdom in them, Dean," I said. I really didn't want to discuss, whether or not Rowina was an adequate source for advice, but these of her words seemed to be suitable. I saw your pain and I just wanted you to see it, too, instead of incessantly only numbing it. Words weren't always my strength, so every now and then I had to use those of others. Even when language didn't come anywhere near explaining how you felt.

" _One of the challenges with pain - physical or psychic - is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can't be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")_


	9. Chapter 9: The Chains

**Chapter 9: The Chains**

I remember. Days later, after you had denied my suggestion to go back hunting, and I was about to be at a loss, even when I would never have given up, you came to the room that I never actually used, but had been entitled to be mine, in the middle of the day. Except for right now, when I was using it, because I had actually needed some distance from you and your grief for a bit. Not because I couldn't bear the view, but because I couldn't bear being incapable of doing anything against it. I had assumed you asleep for the entire day in your room as usual, but here you were, with a newspaper in your hand, fully dressed and with an amused smirk in your face.

"Cas, you need to see this," you said, without even giving me a choice. You sat down beside me on the bed, so close to me that our thighs and shoulders touched. You shoved the newspaper into my face and on the front page I found an article about some real estate mogul, who abused his wife, with a big picture of the man in the middle, leaving a building surrounded by reporters, visibly unhappy.

"Who is that?" I asked perplexedly and turned my head towards you. And I still know, that I wished I hadn't done that, because as close as you were sitting to me, now the tips of our noses also almost met. For a tiny moment we rested in that position, where I saw your face like in a far too close close-up. Then your turned your eyes back to the newspaper in my lap and tapped at a part in the bottom left corner, so that your body almost completely hung over me and your left side pushed into my chest. I briefly looked to the ceiling and wondered if you did that on purpose, or if you simply didn't notice.

"Not this," you said with it, "That!"

I regarded the photograph of a smaller article in the corner and found a crowd standing around an accident, in the middle in-between the people a confused and glancing helplessly Garth, obviously in the middle of a job and unluckily unflatteringly caught in the picture.

"Look how stupid he looks!" you squeaked and I couldn't help but smile. I didn't pay any more attention to the article, my eyes were directed at you and your sudden cheerfulness. I was almost shocked at finally hearing your laughter again, for I hadn't heard it for a long time. I put my hand on your back and moved it in soft half-circles upwards to your neck, where I stopped for a moment and then let go of you. You looked at me with a gaze full of affection and suddenly and abruptly one thing became clear to me: no matter how good and for how long I had known you, no matter how much I knew about you and would still learn, I would never fully understand you. You were like a puzzle I could never finish, because the more pieces I put together, the more new pieces appeared.

" _What I love about science is that as you learn, you don't really get answers. You just get better questions."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")_

But what I had discovered about you a long time ago was that you always seemed to have chains on you. The chains of your father's endless demands and orders, the chains of having to save your brother from the addiction of demon blood and from Lucifer, the chains of the apocalypse coming upon us, the chains of having to save the world from Leviathans, the chains of the Mark of Caine and becoming a demonic killing machine, and ever so on and on. Life doesn't ever seem to stop putting you in chains.

And even when I on the other hand had always had wings, in the truest sense of the word, I was so much more captured than you could ever be. Held down to this earth, pushed to the ground like a small hawk, stuck and lost at the same time, and even in all my inability to fly away, or at least run, and my constant desperation and frustration, I never wanted anything else, because this is where I belonged. This is where I was the happiest. I was like a bird that had forgotten how to fly on purpose, because it had finally found the nest of his choice. Even when, in truth, I hadn't forgotten and it wasn't any purpose behind it either, but had rather been made unable to fly. My wings were now nothing more than a bad decoration on my back, decayed and tattered, hackly and broken. But it was okay, because I didn't plan to use them, I didn't need to fly, I wouldn't even know whereto.

" _It's a weird phrase in English, in love, like it's a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You don't get to be in anything else - in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be in is love."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")_

And I really was. I was in it, upon it, underneath it, next to it and all around it. It was all inside me and all inside me was it. It actually was like I would drown in it and even when my head seemed to be under water, I could breathe fine. More than that, I could breathe better than ever before. Everything was unclear and unsure, everything was so hard to understand and blurry and I didn't know what I was doing and didn't know, if I did the right things, all my decisions being made by only and alone my heart and by the terrible realization and fear for that one day I might have you less, that one day you might not be mine anymore. And as much as I didn't understand you sometimes, because your actions and words and mood swings and practically all about you hardly ever made sense to me and I, no matter how intensively I studied you, never really comprehended, it didn't seem impossible to me, even when an endlessly infinite task. You were crazy and I was out of my mind.


	10. Chapter 10: The Togethership

**Chapter 10: The Togethership**

" _I is the hardest word to define."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")_

I remember. We were still sitting on my bed. I was leaned against the headpiece, my legs spread out and my hands resting in my lap. You on the other hand cross-legged somewhere on the level of my knees, your back buckled and your head hanging over the newspaper. It's strange how different we can experience postures. What is uncomfortable and tense for the one, is the most snugly position of all for the other. It was just a little something, but it showed me once again how different we were. You awkwardly uncontrolled and self-confident, comfortable in your cambered crouching posture, all your hinges angled, almost like your angled mind. Me straight and thoughtful, insecure and actually uncomfortable in every posture. What one may conclude from that train of thoughts is another matter.

I observed your face that, even at such a silent and calm thing as reading, was the most hectic and most restless piece of human I had ever seen. Your eyes were flying to and fro, again and again interrupted by the blink of your lids, your lips were moving along to the words you read, your chin with them, your eyebrows every now and then hurled upwards and very rarely you wrinkled your nose. You were no one, who dabbled at reading, who scanned and skimmed something, no, when you read, you deepened yourself so much in it that your face became your thoughts. That face that knew so many different looks that you could fill a whole encyclopedia with it. And as well as I knew you, I always found new ones, while the only one of them that I will always remember was the first one of them I've seen. Right in that moment, right from the start, I had known that I had found a home for both my eyes and my heartbeat.

And perhaps you weren't perfect. Perhaps you couldn't sleep. Perhaps you couldn't always stay sober. Perhaps your soul was cracked and ripped in so many places that it almost wasn't a whole anymore. Perhaps you were stubborn and unteachable. Perhaps you also drove me crazy and got me into danger over and over again and yes, perhaps you even were something like a disease inside my system, which I couldn't rid myself of, which would break my back piece by piece, which one day would get me killed, like a poison that kicks in slowly. But likewise you could also be strong and confident. Likewise you could be changing me in a good kind of way, helping me, needing me, over and over again not being able to live without me. Likewise you could be not the disease, but the cure.

" _And we're such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn't real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracise and minimise. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with."_

 _(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")_

You looked up from your newspaper and caught me staring. Somewhat ashamed I instantly turned my head in another direction, the cold bald walls of my room my new focus. I heard an amused snort and couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from forming a little smile, while from the corners of my eyes I peered back at you, my hands folded in my lap, as if to pray.

"You know," you suddenly began and put down the newspaper next to you on the bed, "we could as well talk about it"

In my sheer ignorance I knitted my brows and glanced at you, as if you would suddenly speak another language, and said, "About what?"

"You know," you answered, although I did not know, and made a gesture between us, as if that would make anything clearer. I watched your waving hand with a look that must have resembled a toddler staring at a book, although it can't read. For I didn't understand what you wanted to tell me, I found back to your eyes, which looked at me expectantly, and tried to read something there.

"I mean…," you began and stopped for a moment, while you moved your hand over your chin and stared at the blanket underneath us, as if to search for words there, "… u-us… we… our… come on, do I really need to say it out loud?"

I tilted my head and through squinted eyes I glanced into yours and found an almost amusing desperation. Then I said, slowly and as if I would only really discover it along the way, "You mean… the kiss?"

A sigh of mere relief came out of your lungs and for a few milliseconds you even closed your eyes. "Yeah," you said quietly, it was almost a whisper.

For a while we remained silent and however the willingness to talk about it was hovering in the air, we both didn't seem to know what exactly we wanted to say. It happened weeks ago, it almost felt like an eternity, I even already started to believe it had only be a dream. Of course I don't sleep enough to have dreams. To be precise, never.

All of a sudden, like out of an impulse I hadn't noticed myself yet, I put my hand on your knee and our eyes met again. I smiled so much at you that I passed it over to you.

"Good things do happen, Dean," I said and reminded us both of the night we had met for the first time. Inside the corrugated sheet iron structure you and Bobby had scribbled on all sorts of symbols against all sorts of creatures, only not such against creatures like me. Where you had repeatedly, and with all you had, tried to kill me, only to realize that you had nothing and couldn't do it and that I am a thing you neither knew, nor had believed was real.

Your smile widened, when you repeated another sentence of our past, "We're just better together"

For only a short moment we were staring into each other's eyes and smiling, when you suddenly put your hand in my neck, pulled me closer and sealed your words with our lips.

This was our story. A marvelous story. About love, heartbreak, loss. Of fear and anger. Of loneliness and a togethership that needed to develop first and for a long amount of time, but eventually, here we are. Both fractured and broken, both suffering from our past and present and probably also our future. We weren't always good people, what we were is people, who are trying to do good. And no matter how many evil creatures we stopped, the ones inside us, our very own demons, could never be stopped. We saw them in each other's eyes, we felt them in each other's touches, they were just all around us. But as long as we had one another, they couldn't do us any harm.


End file.
